People with Nokia's N73 are eager to replace their handset with a "cooler" N78. Although it has not been released in Hong Kong, the much-hyped N78 has started appearing in different countries. Engadget has just got it and has a gallery of unboxing photos. You can click this link to explore.
They say hawking is not only a part of Hong Kong culture but also offers job opportunities for unskilled workers.
In a paper to Legco, the Food and Health Bureau has suggested the government relax its controls on licences for food stalls, which would amount to a reversal of policy of the past 30 years.
Tsang Kam-ming, chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong, Kowloon New Territories Hawkers Association, said yesterday the policy reversal came late but "better late than never".
"The government tends to regard hawking as a source of hygiene concerns or noise nuisance. But hawking is also a kind of economic activity," Mr Tsang said.
"Grass-roots workers sometimes need to hawk on streets to make extra money to support themselves."
Referring to dai pai dongs, or open-air roadside food stalls, Mr Tsang added: "They are icons of Hong Kong and many tourists like to eat there."
Street hawkers and food stalls could be found across the city in the 1960s. Streets were lined with itinerant hawkers selling daily groceries at affordable prices.
Dai pai tongs were packed during dining hours. A highlight on their menu is yin yeung - a mix of milk tea and coffee. But by the early 1970s, the now defunct Urban Council tightened its policies and stopped issuing hawker licences.
Ice-cream hawker Chan Po-cheung, 73, said the policy reversal could revive the industry. "Although the businesses cannot make a lot of money, at least I can support myself and do not need to depend on welfare," he said.
According to the Food and Health Bureau, the government should explore "the feasibility of re-issuing new hawker licences and relaxing the requirements for succession and transfer of hawker licences".
Licences would be issued to new operators in some open-air bazaars like the Ladies' Market in Mong Kok, where vacant spots are available. On dai pai dongs, the bureau says district councils should be given a bigger say in deciding whether a stall should be closed or allowed to continue to operate after the expiry of a licence.
The 80-year-old Man Yuen noodle shop in Elgin Street in Central was forced to close in 2005 after its licence lapsed with the death of the licensee, Wong Kwong-hing. His partners were not allowed to continue the business.
The bureau also backs re-issuing licences to small ice cream vendors and ice cream vans, although it is against easing the policy on itinerant hawkers because of hygiene and environmental concerns. There are 6,513 fixed-pitch hawker licences, including 28 dai pai dongs and 79 cooked food bazaars.
Legislators on the food safety and environmental hygiene panel are expected to discuss the matter next Tuesday. Panellist Wong Kwok-hing, welcomed the policy review, saying: "It can help ease the poverty problem too if people are allowed to hawk to make more money."
SCMP. Jun 6, 2008.
Despite earlier suggestions that June 4 remembrance activities should be scaled down in light of the disaster that left at least 69,000 dead, organisers instead turned the vigil into a remembrance of both tragic events.
They said more than 48,000 took part, compared with 55,000 last year. Police estimated the figure to be 15,700. Activists said the turnout showed that Hong Kong people had not forgotten June 4.
Echoing above the sea of candles that illuminated the faces of the crowd, which covered seven soccer pitches in Victoria Park, were calls for the central government to reverse its verdict on the 1989 pro-democracy movement, release jailed dissidents and introduce democracy by ending the one-party leadership by the Communist Party.
"Through the candlelight, we shall see the bloodbath and the bodies in disarray 19 years ago," the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China said in its declaration for the vigil. "We shall also see the countless dead and injured under debris in the Sichuan earthquake."
Singing the pro-democracy songs that were sung by students and workers making their last stand before the advancing soldiers and tanks in Beijing's Tiananmen Square 19 years ago, activists laid wreaths and bowed in front of a makeshift memorial.
Paying tribute to the dead, alliance chairman Szeto Wah praised the central government's earthquake relief efforts, which he hoped represented a breakthrough that would lead to greater openness and freedom on the mainland.
"We cannot escape natural disasters like earthquakes, but man-made ones like the bloody crackdown are not inevitable ... Our dear countrymen, who lost your lives in the massacre and the earthquake, may you rest in peace," he said.
To show solidarity with the earthquake victims, all donations collected last night in support of the pro- democracy movement will be sent to the Red Cross for quake relief.
In a prayer session of Christian groups before they joined the vigil, Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun said he was hopeful the state leadership would vindicate the hundreds killed in the Tiananmen tragedy before its 20th anniversary.
He drew a parallel between the visit to the quake site by Premier Wen Jiabao and that of late party secretary Zhao Ziyang to the students in Tiananmen Square.
"Despite the hopelessness, Premier Wen has shown the face of a loving parent in the rescue efforts ... Perhaps it is also the hope of Premier Wen to rectify the June 4 verdict and vindicate the Tiananmen martyrs."
SCMP. June 5, 2008
Companies that assign addresses for websites appear to be cutting corners on security more when they assign names in certain domains than in others, according to a report to be released later on Wednesday by antivirus software vendor McAfee.
McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to were “.hk” (Hong Kong), “.cn” (China) and “.info” (information).
Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 per cent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 per cent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 per cent of “.info” sites that way.
A little more than 5 per cent of the sites under the “.com” domain — the world's most popular — were identified as dangerous.
More spammers, malicious code writers and other cyber-criminals can establish an online presence when domain name registry businesses cut requirements for registering a site in order to boost their profit and profile. The report does not identify domain name registration companies McAfee believes are responsible for those lapses.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are in the business of registering domain names; some are large and well known, while others are small and less reputable, offering their services on the cheap and with flimsy or no background checks to lure in more customers.
The fact that internet scam artists gravitate to domain name services with lower fees and fewer requirements is not new.
What McAfee's “Mapping the Mal Web” report, now in its second year, tries to do is identify the domains that are populated with the highest concentration of risky sites.
The servers for “.hk” and “.cn” Web sites do not have to be in China; Web site operators can register sites from anywhere to target different geographies.
Other risky domains include “.ro” (Romania), with 6.8 per cent, and “.ru” (Russia), with 6 per cent of sites flagged as dangerous.
Shane Keats, research analyst for McAfee and lead author of the report, said the increase in dangerous sites registered under the “.hk” and “.cn” domains over last year's report was caused in part by better data collection on McAfee's part on those domains and by apparent security lapses in some registrar companies' processes for registering addresses.
“My advice about surfing behaviour is that if you're really desperate for cheap Prozac and the pharmacy ends in ‘.cn,' don't do it. Just don't do it,” Mr Keats said. “Find another place to get your Prozac.”
Many internet frauds involve fake sites for pharmaceuticals.
The McAfee report is based on results from 9.9 million websites that were tested in 265 domains for serving malicious code, excessive pop-up ads or forms to fill out that actually are tools for harvesting e-mail addresses for sending spam.
Mr Keats said domain name registrars that were strict about authenticating that website owners were operating a legitimate business saw far fewer malicious websites using their services.
Where McAfee found some of the least-risky domain names:
People in China are able to access English language stories on the BBC News website in full, after years of strict control by Beijing.
The Communist authorities often block news sites such as the BBC in a policy dubbed the "great firewall of China".
But BBC staff working in China now say they are able to access news stories that would have been blocked before.
However, the firewall remains in place for Chinese language services on the website and for any links in Chinese.
'Without hindrance'
Beijing has never admitted to blocking access to BBC news stories - and there has been no official confirmation that the website has been unblocked.
But Chinese users trying to access pages on the site have almost always been redirected to an error message telling them: "The connection was reset."
It now appears that this is no longer the case, and access to the site is much easier.
Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website, says this is a welcome development.
"We want BBC News to be as accessible in China as anywhere else in the world," he said.
"We will endeavour to continue working with the Chinese authorities to improve our access in other areas."
Technology experts say such a development would not be possible without the approval of internet service providers - which are under strict supervision by Beijing.
Surprised readers
Statistics show that traffic to the website from China has been much higher than usual.
Typically fewer than 100 people read stories from Chinese computers - but on Tuesday that figure jumped to more than 16,000.
And comments have been flooding in to BBC forums from all over China.
Ross Brown in Qingdao, Shandong province, wrote: "We were just discussing with some of our Chinese colleagues about the fact BBC website was blocked, went on to show them and we see this latest news. Excellent news."
Many of the comments came from readers of the website who have spent years accessing the stories by linking their computers to others based outside of China.
Tibet difficulties
The Chinese authorities had promised to give foreign journalists more freedom in the run-up to this summer's Olympic Games.
But analysts say that recent outbreaks of unrest in Tibet have made this promise more difficult for Beijing to uphold.
The BBC and other media organisations still find reporting from Tibet very difficult - foreign journalists were refused permission to enter the region during the recent protests.
The websites of UK newspapers the Times and Guardian - as well as video-sharing site YouTube - were blocked or partially blocked during the unrest.
This week the Chinese government has arranged a trip for foreign media organisations to Tibet - but the BBC's request to be included was rejected.
Although no official ban has ever been announced, the BBC News website has been blocked for almost a decade.
The Chinese language website has been blocked since its launch in 1999.
Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles potato crisps that he asked his family to bury him in one.
His children honored his request. Part of his remains was buried in a Pringles can - along with a regular urn containing the rest - in his grave at Arlington Memorial Gardens in Springfield Township.
Dr. Baur, a retired organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice. The College Hill resident was 89.
He developed many products, including frying oils and a freeze-dried ice cream, for P&G. The ice cream was patented and marketed, but didn't catch on. "Basically, what you did, you added milk to it, put it in the freezer and you had ice cream," said his son Lawrence J. Baur of Stevensville, Mich. "That was another one he was proud of but just never went anywhere."
Later in his career, Dr. Baur became a compliance specialist for P&G. "He had a worldwide reputation in plant sanitation and traveled all over the world inspecting plants," said his daughter, Linda L. Baur, of Diamondhead, Miss. He also lectured, edited books, and wrote several publications and articles.
But the Pringles can - a tube-shaped container designed to hold the salty, stackable, saddle-shaped chip - was his proudest accomplishment, his daughter said. He received a patent for the package as well as the method of packaging Pringles in 1970.
Born in Toledo on July 14, 1918, Dr. Baur received a bachelor's degree from the University of Toledo and both a master's degree and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Ohio State University.
He served in the Navy as an aviation physiologist stationed in San Diego during World War II. Aviation physiologists conducted research on the medical aspects of flight.
Dr. Baur started working for P&G in the late 1940s and retired in the early 1980s.
He was a member of College Hill Presbyterian Church and active with the national Presbyterian Church. He was on the board of directors of the church-run Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.
His wife, Elaine Baur, died in 2001.
In addition to his daughter, Linda, and son Lawrence, survivors include another son, Ronald S. Baur of College Hill; and four grandchildren.
Services have been held.
